How did we get here?

Where to even start! This blog is going to jump out, there’s a lot to unpack.  It’s important to say this just didn’t happen overnight but rather over years and years things just gradually got worse and each time it gets pushed a little further.  How do I summarise how we got to this point over 15 years?

I met my husband, lets just call him ‘J’ when I was 21. We were both young, loud and full of fun. Our weekends were filled with partying mostly. Drinking, causal recreational drugs, hangover Sundays. This carried on for most of our 20s however in this time J developed a gambling addiction. 

This was my first experience of dealing with any sort of addictions and I couldn’t get my head round it. He would get paid on a Friday and by the Saturday morning all his wages would be gone. These were the days where you could walk into a bookies and put a large sum on a roulette machine. I believe now new laws have came into place where there is a betting limit. He hid this well for a long time. Losing all his wages and then taking out payday loans to cover himself. Taking out credit cards and using them to gamble (again new laws are in now where you can't do this). This obviously was not sustainable and it caught up with him eventually. At this point we weren’t living together but we were saving to get a place together and gradually our finances were just becoming entwined as we done everything together. I bailed him out.  There was no question to not do that. I loved this man, he had made a terrible mistake and I could help. He started going to GA meetings which seemed to help him. He gave up his financial independence and closed all his bank accounts, credit cards and became invisible  in an effort to make it harder for him to have access to cash. This worked well and after a year it felt like it was all over. He never gambled, avoided situations that involved gambling like going to the races, poker nights and that was the end of it. 

Over the next few years we moved in together and got engaged.  In these years we still drank most weekends and went out but a pattern started emerging where a large sum of cash would be lifted to pay drug dealers. Drugs that I did not know he had taken… he would say it was on nights out with his friends.  This happened on a monthly basis and it annoyed me but we were still young, had no responsibilities really. My view started to change when I fell pregnant and I got tired of it. Looking back then I wish I had left the relationship but it always felt like it was going to be too hard. I was pregnant, worried about doing it alone.  I remember when I first had the baby he borrowed money from his mum to buy me a present for giving birth but actually he used it to pay off a drug dealer.  Unfortunately this situation wasn’t unique and I had several friends who were in the same position. Money being spent on drugs with no thought or care about the financial impact.  And this just continued really throughout the years, he would be fine for a few months and then it would turn out he owed money to someone.  He would usually have some beers on a Thursday night to watch football, then it would be Wednesday and Thursday nights and then it would be a Tuesday night too. He would say he was just having a couple of beers but I would notice he was more drunk than a couple of beers. I would find bottles of vodka stashed everywhere over the house. Everywhere. If I decided to go looking, I would find something. 

Writing this down is so hard because I am screaming at this saying why didn’t you leave. Why are you still there.  I don’t have an answer really why I am still here.  It’s important to say that for the past 6 months he has been going to CA meetings and its not been successful as such as he’s only ever went 2 or 3 weeks without a drink or drugs but I guess that’s an improvement from everyday.  I guess I feel hopeful that he will get better and we can just be a normal family.

The most recent drama is that I bought a bottle of Rum for his dad's birthday. We don't keep any alcohol in the house anymore and I did say i wasn't comfortable to keep it in the house and he said he would absolutely be fine and to keep it in the office where I work everyday so I would see it was there (it was 1 week until we would be giving the gift). Randomly a few days later I just decided to look at the bottle and noticed it had been unscrewed, took a drink of it and sure enough it had been drank and filled with pepsi. And that's how I found out he had relapsed again after 3 weeks.